Fused Nation - UK SEO Blog

Finally getting round to the SEO review requests that have been submitted and next on the list is Apex Networks.  Apex Networks offer IT and software support services for businesses in London and the surrounding areas.

First thing I have to say about the site - it looks damn good and has definitely been setup by a SEO savvy web developer.  Basically, it already ticks the right boxes in terms of SEO:

1. Good content
2. Unique page titles
3. Good navigation (nice use of CSS for good visual effect and search engine access)
4. Good layout of content which lends itself well to keyword categorisation and optimisation

In all honesty if you were to come to me looking to hire me for professional SEO services I would turn you away because you really don’t need it.  You have a good SEO friendly site already and all you really need to think about is working on your keyword targeting a little better and then look at all important link building.

Nonetheless, I’ll make a few comments about the site - which you will have to excuse me for because it’s nothing more than nit picking but there are a few little things worth tweaking and won’t take you more than a day to do.

Adjusting your headings

This page has a great heading: http://www.apex-networks.com/support/outsourced-it-staff.aspx - it’s marked up using an H1 tag and it not only has your target keyword in the sentence, but also sends out a clear message to help your visitors quickly determine what the page is about.

I personally think that you should look at applying this concept to all of your pages as some of the service pages simply have one or two words as the title - although this would be sufficient for SEO, you can add more keywords in there to help target other terms as well.

Not essential, but goes that extra mile and can potentially help you grab a little more traffic.

Keyword targeting

I think your current approach to keyword targeting is a little on the soft side.  Ideally, you want to take every product or service you have and head over to Overture or Wordtracker or something and do some serious keyword research.  Find dozens of keywords for each product and service you offer and a few more to cover your generic business area.

When you are done with that, simply list all your pages and assign the keywords to each page as appropriate.  “Blue widget sales” gets assigned to your “blue widgets” page and so on.

Pick the best ones for each page (in terms of traffic volume vs relevance).  That’s your main keyword for that page.  Select a few more similar keywords - those are your secondary keywords for that page.

For example - ”Red widgets” might be your main keyword, and your secondary keywords will be “Red widgets for sale”, “red widget services”.

Use this data to re-optimise each page - it shouldn’t take too long - adjust your titles and headings appropriately (don’t feel the need to stick every keyword in there - mix it up a bit!).  Then rewrite your page copy to include these terms here and there.

You do this done and you will have expanded your keyword portfolio by a great deal, opening the doors to a much broader range of search traffic.

Content

Small word about content - it’s all pretty damn good - just a few pages are a little low on content compared to others, so perhaps try and pad that out a bit.

Meta

You are using common Meta descriptions and Meta keywords on each page.  Need to write up some unique content for these.  Don’t be tempted to use a few lines from your page in the description - your Meta description gives you the chance to write a keyword rich short sales pitch for the page.

Include the keywords that you are targeting (so when you rank for those terms, search engines will be more likely to use your Meta description for the snippet of text in the results) and write something that will encourage people to visit your site.

Page Title

Personally I would go with “Keyword - Brand Name” but “Brand Name - Keyword” is just as good.  It’s really personal preference and I wouldn’t worry about it.  The main thing is that you have the keywords in there somewhere.

Local targeting

This is key as many of your search terms alone will be very competitive and as you don’t serve a national market you want to look to refining your keyword targeting.

Some local SEO tips here.

I think an easy way to do this would be to add a small tagline to the footer of your page - something like, “Apex Networks - Business IT and Support solutions in Kent, London, UK” (your current homepage heading).  This adds a little more relevant keywords to each page and also adds in some local town names, etc to help you rank for local searches.  Stick this around about where your address is and that should do it.

Non WWW version of the domain

Doesn’t resolve.  It really should 301 redirect to the WWW version.  Not a huge deal for SEO unless people miss out the WWW when they link to you (which most won’t) - but worth fixing.

Index.aspx

www.apex-networks.com and www.apex-networks.com/index.aspx are the same page.  Not a huge problem (Google is ignoring the /index.aspx version), but you could throw up a 301 from /index.aspx to your root domain for consistency.

Link building

Obviously a key area.  Some of the backlinks showing on Google are obvious link exchanges which I would avoid, if for nothing else they aren’t that effective.

Take 10 minutes to Google for lists of free directories and spend an hour each month submitting to a few - be sure to get into the big ones first.  Also paid directories such as Business.com are good links to get if you have a budget to spend and here are some others.

To end with…

You have a great site - kudos to your web developer!  It’s really up to you whether or not you want to go a little bit further with your SEO efforts - how’s the web traffic you have converting for you just now?  It’s really a business judgement call to make but I think it would be worth it as they are all minor tweaks here and there and can make a difference.

Any questions feel free to let me know.

Cheers

Scott